The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Having phoned ahead, Manser parked the car at midnight on South Wharf Road, just by the junction with Praed Street. He was early, so instead of going directly to the dilapidated pub on the corner he sauntered to the bridge over Paddington Basin and stared up at the Westway, hoping for calm. The sounds emanating from that elevated sweep were anything but soothing. The mechanical sigh of speeding vehicles reminded him only of the way those witches’ mouths had breathed, snake-like jaws unhinged as though in readiness to swallow him whole. The hiss of tyres on rain-soaked tarmac put him in mind of nothing but the wet air that had sped from Knowlden’s chest when he was torn open.

  By the time he returned, he saw in the pub a low-wattage bulb turning the glass of an upstairs window milky. He went to the door and tapped on it with a coin in a prearranged code. Then he went back to the car and opened the boot. He wrestled with Laura and managed to clamp a hand over her mouth, which she bit, hard. Swearing, he dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and stuffed it in her mouth, punching her twice to get her still. The pain in his hand was mammoth. She had teeth like razors. Flaps of skin hung off his palm; he was bleeding badly. Woozy at the sight of the wound, he staggered with Laura to the door, which was now open. He went through it and kicked it shut, checking the street to make sure he hadn’t been seen. Upstairs, Losh was sitting in a chair containing more holes than stuffing.

  “This was a good boozer before it was closed down,” Manser said, his excitement unfolding deep within him.

  “Was,” Losh said, keeping his eyes on him. He wore a butcher’s apron that was slathered with blood. He smoked a cigarette, the end of which was patterned with bloody prints from his fingers. A comma of blood could be mistaken for a kiss-curl on his forehead. “Everything changes.”

  “You don’t,” Manser said. “Christ. Don’t you ever wash?”

  “What’s the point? I’m a busy man.”

  “How many years you been struck off?”

  Losh smiled. “Didn’t anybody ever warn you not to piss off the people you need help from?”

  Manser swallowed his distaste of the smaller man. “Nobody warns me nothing,” he spat. “Can’t we get on?”

  Losh stood up and stretched. “Cash,” he said, luxuriously.

  Manser pulled a wad from his jacket. “There’s six grand there. As always.”

  “I believe you. I’d count it but the bank get a bit miffed if they get blood on their bills.”

  “Why don’t you wear gloves?”

  “The magic. It’s all in the fingers.” Losh gestured towards Laura. “This the one?”

  “Of course.”

  “Pretty thing. Nice legs.” Losh laughed. Manser closed his eyes. Losh said, “What you after?”

  Manser said, “The works.”

  Wide eyes from Losh. “Then let’s call it eight thou.”

  A pause. Manser said, “I don’t have it with me. I can get it tomorrow. Keep the car tonight. As collateral.”

  Losh said, “Done.”

  The first incision. Blood squirted up the apron, much brighter than the stains already painted upon it. A coppery smell filled the room. The pockets of the pool table upon which Laura was spread were filled with beer towels. “Soft tissue?”

  Manser’s voice was dry. He needed a drink. His cock was as hard as a house brick. “As much off as possible.” “She won’t last long,” Losh said. Manser stared at him. “She’ll last long enough.” Losh said, “Got a number five in mind already?” Manser didn’t say a word. Losh reached behind him and picked up a Samsonite suitcase. He opened it and pulled out a hacksaw. Its teeth entertained the light and flung it in every direction. At least Losh kept his tools clean.

  The operation took four hours. Manser fell asleep at one point and dreamed of his hand overpowering the rest of his body, dragging him around the city while the mouth that slavered and snarled at the centre of his palm cupped itself around the stomachs of passers-by and devoured them.

  He wakened, rimed with perspiration, to see Losh chewing an errant hangnail and tossing his instruments back into the suit-case. Laura was wrapped in white bath towels. They were crimson now.

  “Is she okay?” Manser asked. Losh’s laughter in reply was infectious and soon he was at it too.

  “Do you want the offcuts?” Losh asked, wiping his eyes and jerking a thumb at a bucket tastefully covered with a dishcloth.

  “You keep them,” Manser said. “I’ve got to be off.”

  Losh said, “Who opened the window?”

  Nobody had opened the window; the lace curtains fluttering inward were being pushed by the bulge of glass. Losh tore them back just as the glass shattered in his face. He screamed and fell backwards, tripping on the bucket and sprawling on to the floor.

  To Manser it seemed that strips of the night were pouring in through the broken window. They fastened themselves to Losh’s face and neck and munched through the flesh like a caterpillar at a leaf. His screams were low and already being disguised by blood as his throat filled. He began to choke but managed one last, hearty shriek as a major blood vessel parted, spraying colour all around the room with the abandon of an unmanned hosepipe.

  How can they breathe with their heads so deep inside him? Manser thought, hypnotized by the violence. He felt something dripping on his brow. Touching his face with his fingers, he brought them away to find them awash with blood. He had time to register, as he looked up at the ceiling, the mouth as it yawned, dribbling with lymph, the head as it vibrated with unfettered anticipation. And then the woman dropped on him, ploughing her jaws through the meat of his throat and ripping clear. He saw his flesh disappear down her gullet with a spasm that was almost beautiful. But then his sight filled with red and he could understand no more.

  She had been back home for a day. She couldn’t understand how she had got here. She remembered being born from the warmth of her companions and standing up to find both men little more than pink froth filling their suits. One of the men had blood on his hands and a cigarette smouldered between his fingers. The hand was on the other side of the room, though. She saw the bloody, tiny mound of towels on the pool table. She saw the bucket; the dishcloth had shifted, revealing enough to tell her the game. Two toes was enough. She didn’t need to be drawn a picture.

  And then somehow she found herself outside. And then on Edgware Road where a pretty young woman with dark hair and a woven shoulder bag gave her a couple of pounds so that she could get the tube to Euston. And then a man smelling of milk and boot polish she fucked in a shop doorway for her fare north. And then Preston, freezing around her in the early morning as if it were formed from winter itself. She had half expected Andrew to poke his head around the corner of their living-room to say hello, the tea’s on, go and sit by the fire and I’ll bring some to you.

  But the living-room was cold and bare. She found sleep at the time she needed it most, just as her thoughts were about to coalesce around the broken image of her baby. She was crying because she couldn’t remember what her face looked like.

  When she revived, it was dark again. It was as if daylight had forsaken her. She heard movement towards the back of the house. Outside, in the tiny, scruffy garden, a cardboard box, no bigger than the type used to store shoes, made a stark shape amid the surrounding frost. The women were hunched on the back fence, regarding her with owlish eyes. They didn’t speak. Maybe they couldn’t.

  One of them swooped down and landed by the box. She nudged it forward with her hand, as a deer might coax a newborn to its feet. Sarah felt another burst of unconditional love and security fill the gap between them all. Then they were gone, whipping and twisting far into the sky, the consistency, the trickiness of smoke.

  Sarah took the box into the living-room with her and waited. Hours passed; she felt herself become more and more peaceful. She loved her daughter and she hoped Laura knew that. As dawn began to brush away the soot from the sky, Sarah leaned over and touched the lid. She wanted so much to open it and say a few words, but she
couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  In the end, she didn’t need to. Whatever remained inside the box managed to do it for her.

  <>

  * * * *

  JOEL LANE

  The Lost District

  Joel lane lives in Birmingham. His tales of horror and the supernatural have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, includingDarklands, Little Deaths, The Third Alternative, The Ex Files, White of the Moon, Dark Terrors 4, 5 and 6, Swords Against the Millennium, The Museum of Horrors, The Darker Side and Gathering the Bones.

  He is the author of a collection of short stories, The Earth Wire (Egerton Press, 1994); a collection of poems, The Edge of the Screen (Arc, 1999), and two novels, From Blue to Black (Serpent’s Tail, 2000) and The Blue Mask (Serpent’s Tail, 2002). Lane has also edited Beneath the Ground (Alchemy Press, 2002), an anthology of subterranean horror stories and, with Steve Bishop, Birmingham Noir (Tindal Street Press, 2002), an anthology of tales of crime and psychological suspense.

  ‘Influences on “The Lost District” include Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell and The X Files,’ explains the author. ‘It was written for a Leiber tribute booklet that never got published. Then it was accepted for a horror anthology whose publisher went out of business. I began to suspect that it was fated to kill every project it was accepted into, like a paper version of the Red Death. Happily, it appeared in Andy Cox’s excellent The Third Alternative with no fatal outcome for the magazine.’

  * * * *

  These lost streets are decaying only very slowly. The impacted lives of their inhabitants, the meaninglessness of news, the dead black of the chimney breasts, the conviction that the wind itself comes only from the next street, all wedge together to keep destruction out; to deflect the eye of the developer.

  Roy Fisher

  Q

  uite recently, I heard some kid on the TV saying ‘Nothing ever changes’. It made me think about Nicola. Are we really blind to what happened before our own lives? This was just after the 1997 General Election, the first change of government in eighteen years. There’d been this joke going round that all the parties had trouble canvassing in the Black Country, because none of the local people would go outside the street they lived in. Which again reminded me of Nicola, and made me want to go back to Clayheath and see what, if anything, had changed.

  Back in 1979, I was in the fifth year at secondary school. It was an odd time for me. People think ‘teenage culture’ is just one thing that everybody gets into. But it wasn’t that simple. In our school there were punks, second-generation Mods, long-haired heavy-metal kids and fledgling Rastas. Each crowd had its own language, politics and drugs. The rebels had gone by then, disappearing into casual work or street-life or youth custody. Those who remained were only playing with fire, not living in it. Like the girl who was sent home for wearing a slashed blazer. We were too obsessed with our needs and resentments to communicate. None of us knew what to say, what to feel, what to believe in. It didn’t matter: nothing was going to change.

  After school, at a loose end, I often walked or ran through the long strip of parkland along the Hagley Road. The first half was neatly laid out, with flower beds and bowling greens. The second half was more like woodland, an overgrown and sometimes marshy surface flowing around the boles of huge trees. Now that I no longer had to do Games, I missed the exhausting crosscountry runs that had made me feel connected to places like this. It had been my only chance to look good in front of the heavy lads who could fillet me on the rugby pitch. Out here, I could leave them panting and clumping while I raced against the heartbeat of an invisible partner, on into a mist of adrenalin and sweat. But at sixteen, I was too lazy and self-conscious to race against anyone.

  One chilly, bright day in April, I was strolling along the boundary between the halves of the park: a ragged line of birches, their silvery trunks slashed with rust. Phrases from my German homework were flickering through my head, alongside The Jam’s ‘Going Underground’. A pale-faced girl was sitting on a bench in front of a cedar tree, not far away. I walked past her, noting her short dark hair, white blouse and black skirt. In the thin afternoon light it was like a scene from an old film. Her gaze followed me impassively.

  Driven by a sudden impulse to try and impress her, I ran up to the cedar tree. It was as wide as it was tall. I clasped my hands around the lowest branch and pulled myself up, kicking to gain height. A momentary shiver of sexual excitement passed through me. Using the rough trunk for support, I climbed upwards for another three or four branches. I felt a cold breeze shake the leaves around me, and didn’t dare climb any higher. The girl was standing below me. I could see her upturned face, almost featureless at this height. A sudden vertigo snapped my eyes out of focus and I could see two of her, no less alone for it.

  When I’d succeeded in climbing down, we stood awkwardly for a while. ‘Which way are you going?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t mind.’ She smiled; her teeth were strong and very white. ‘You just come from school?’ I nodded. ‘I’m from Clayheath. Y’know, out past Quinton. Came here on the bus.’ Her accent was Black Country with a touch of something else, perhaps Irish. It was an old person’s voice.

  We walked along toward the road, where the traffic was beginning to thicken. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked.

  ‘I have to get out sometimes. Just anywhere. It’s bad at home.’ I knew what she meant. I was in no hurry to get back to our narrow house in Smethwick: my tired parents bickering and shouting, my brother turning up the sport on TV to drown out everything, chores undone, dinner a communal stare. ‘You don’t know where Clayheath is, do you?’

  I’d never heard of it. ‘Never been there. Is it far?’

  ‘Not really. It’s just nobody goes there. Or leaves.’ Along the Hagley Road, the lamp-posts were hung with election placards: mostly blue, a few red. Traffic punctuated our conversation. Her name was Nicola; she worked part-time in a garage. I guessed she was the same age as me. She looked unhappy even when she smiled; it was something in her gaze, always trying to run away. Her skin, stretched tight over her cheekbones, was as pale as a Chinese paper lantern. I wanted to make her blush.

  When we reached her bus stop, Nicola said ‘What are you doing on Sunday?’ I shrugged. ‘D’you want to come to Clayheath?’ She gave me directions that involved catching a local train to Netherton, then taking the number 147 bus as far as the swimming baths. She’d wait for me there. ‘Promise you won’t let me down.’ I promised. We stared at each other nervously until the Quinton bus arrived. Then Nicola leaned forward and kissed me, her eyes shut. Her lips were so soft I could hardly feel them, just her teeth and a whisper of breath. When the bus drove away, I turned round and walked back into Bearwood. After a while, I realized I’d passed my stop and was in a street I didn’t recognize. All the shops had closed.

  * * * *

  The train to Netherton stopped at Sandwell, Blackheath, Cradley Heath, and some other towns or districts I’d never heard of. The gaps between towns were a mixture of rural and industrial features: forests, waste ground, factories, scrapyards, canals. Parts of the line ran close to the backyards of terraced houses, where clothes jittered on washing lines and blurred figures moved behind windows. I pictured Nicola in such a room, brushing her hair. The only other people in the train carriage were three teenagers, not much older than me, who’d got on at Blackheath. The two girls sat behind me, whispering to each other. The boy sat in front of me, on the other side. He was wearing a brown jacket that he’d pulled up so it covered his head. After a few minutes of sitting like this, leaning sharply forward, he twisted his face around and snarled, ‘A wooden vote for th’Layba.’ The girls didn’t respond. His pale, staring face rose above the seat like a mask. ‘Ah said, a wooden vote for th’Laybabarstad.’ Then he relapsed into his leaning posture, forehead pressed against the back of his seat, jacket pulled over his ears.

  The bus stop was in a narrow, old-fashioned high street with half-timbered bui
ldings and wooden pub signs. The approaching streets were the usual Black Country mixture of small factories, houses and less easily identified buildings. Nothing was derelict, but everything had been patched up and reallocated many times over. Most of the buildings had the soft, grimy look of long-ingrained pollution. A faint sunlight filtered through the streets without catching any surface. Opposite a grey churchyard was a tall Victorian building with stone steps: the swimming baths. As I got off the bus, I saw Nicola step out from the shadow of the wall. She was wearing a pale grey jacket and black jeans. I walked towards her, wondering if I should kiss her or wait for a better opportunity. Her pale hand gripped my arm; her lips brushed my cheek. ‘Glad you made it here,’ she said.

  We walked together through the centre of Clayheath, if a place so marginal could be said to have a centre. All around us were raw traces of industry a hundred years old: canals just below road level, a brickworks wearing a loose scarf of smoke, black cast-iron railings ornamented with crudely worked flowers, walls studded with blue-green pieces of clinker from glass manufacture. By contrast, the houses themselves were coldly uniform: narrow grey terraces arranged in regular grids like the lines on a chessboard. The district seemed overcast, though the sky was dead white.